Category Archives: society

Senile Hypocrite Biden On UN Charter

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By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Kurt Nimmo Blog

Poor cognitively impaired Joe Biden. He repeats the obvious distortion fed to him on Ukraine and the United Nations Charter via teleprompter. Behind the scenes, I wonder if they are feeding him Adderall so he doesn’t screw it up — the hypocrisy, that is. It is possible Joe doesn’t remember the execrable role he enthusiastically played in the destruction and mass murder in what was once the most advanced nation in the Middle East, Iraq.

How dare he accuse Russia of violating the United Nations Charter, especially Article 51, which states:

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

I don’t expect Joe to know anything about the history of the Ukraine or the Cossack Hetmanate therein, its allegiance to the Russian Tsar (the Pereiaslav Agreement), and thus the Russian ethnic character of much of eastern and central Ukraine. It was later incorporated into the “Little Russia Governorate” established by Catherine II, thus becoming part of Russia. Other nations did not consider the region Russian, but rather a Russian vassal state.

But all of that is ancient history. Today the people of Donetsk and Luhansk consider themselves Russian, not Ukrainian. It can be argued that much of this cultural milieu stretches far as the Dnipro River to the west and certainly in the south at Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, including Odesa to the west on the Black Sea.

This is where the United Nations has failed. It defines nations along state-controlled borders, often established by war, not ethnic plurality as is the case in the Donbas Oblast.

At any rate, Biden’s remarks make him a hypocrite on steroids (or Adderall). Biden wholeheartedly supported and pushed for the destruction of Iraq. Despite claiming to be “democracies” (a term so whacked out of proportion as to be meaningless), the United States and the United Kingdom decided to violate the UN Charter and invade Iraq.

“I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal,” stated then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The neocon invasion destroyed the civilian infrastructure of Iraq, most heinously targeting its effort to produce clean drinking water, an egregious violation of the Geneva Conventions (in other words, a war crime).

“Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war,” writes Mark Weisbrot for The Guardian.

Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

The war in the Ukraine is misunderstood in America, if hardly noticed, by an indoctrinated and propagandized populace. Most of the lies and fabrications emanate from a neo-Nazi penetrated government (more a kleptocracy run by oligarchs and the most corrupt country in Europe). The lies, mostly fed to the US by the serial liar and authoritarian “leader” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are sucked up unquestioningly by the corporate propaganda media and fed to the population as truth.

Joe Biden is a war criminal, same as the remainder (with a few exceptions) of Congress. The decade long starvation, malnutrition, and infant mortality under “sanctions” imposed on Iraq destroyed the country for a decade under George W. Bush, his father, and their partner in crime, President Bill Clinton.

The United States is a serial violator of the UN Charter it now claims to respect. It is the most dangerous country on earth, not Russia. I don’t support war, even under these circumstances (neo-Nazi ethnic cleansers ignored in the West). I do, however, support the end of this conflict.

It is not Russia that should be carved up into harmless statelets, but the Ukraine. The genocidal neo-Nazis must be brought to justice, preferably before an International audience at The Hague, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court.

I am, however, not hopeful. History is instructive.

Europe, more than Putin, must shoulder the blame for the energy crisis

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The same arrogant, self-righteous posturing from the West that fuelled the Ukraine war is now plunging Europe into recession

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky appears on a giant screen as he addresses a Nato summit in Madrid, 29 June 2022 (AFP)

By Jonathan Cook

Source: Middle East Eye

Outraged western leaders are threatening a price cap on imports of Russian natural gas after Moscow cut supplies to Europe this month, deepening an already dire energy and cost-of-living crisis. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Europe will “freeze” this winter unless there is a change of tack.

In this back-and-forth, the West keeps stepping up the rhetoric. Putin is accused of using a mix of blackmail and economic terror against Europe. His actions supposedly prove once more that he is a monster who cannot be negotiated with, and a threat to world peace.

Denying fuel to Europe as winter approaches, in a bid to weaken the resolve of European states to support Kyiv and alienate European publics from their leaders, is Putin’s opening gambit in a plot to expand his territorial ambitions from Ukraine to the rest of Europe.

Or so runs the all-too-familiar narrative shared by western politicians and media.

In fact, Europe’s arrogant, self-righteous posturing over Russian gas supplies, divorced from any discernible geopolitical reality, reflects precisely the same foolhardy mindset that helped provoke Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in the first place.

It is also the reason why there has been no exit ramp – a path to negotiations – even as Russia has taken vast swaths of Ukraine’s eastern and southern flanks – territory that cannot be reclaimed without a further massive loss of life on both sides, as the limited Ukrainian assault around Kharkiv has highlighted.

The western media has to carry a major share of the blame for these serial failures of diplomacy. Journalists have amplified only too loudly and uncritically what US and European leaders want their publics to believe is going on. But maybe it is time that Europeans heard a little of how things might look to Russian eyes.

Economic war

The media could start by dropping their indignation at “insolent” Moscow for refusing to supply Europe with gas. After all, Moscow has been only too clear about the reason for the shutdown of gas supplies: it is in retaliation for the West imposing economic sanctions – a form of collective punishment on the wider Russian population that risks violating the laws of war. 

The West is well practised in waging economic war on weak states, usually in a futile attempt to topple leaders they don’t like or as a softening-up exercise before it sends in troops or proxies.

Iran has faced decades of sanctions that have inflicted a devastating toll on its economy and population but done nothing to bring down the government.

Meanwhile, Washington is waging what amounts to its own form of economic terrorism on the Afghan people to punish the ruling Taliban for driving out US occupation forces last year in a humiliating fashion. The United Nations reported last month that sanctions had contributed to the risk of more than a million Afghan children dying from starvation.

There is nothing virtuous about the current economic sanctions on Russia either, any more than there is about the blackballing of Russian sportspeople and cultural icons. The sanctions are not intended to push Putin to the negotiating table. As US President Biden made clear in March, the West is planning for a long war and he wants to see Putin removed from power. 

Rather, the goal has been to weaken his authority and – in some fantasy scenario – encourage his subordinates to turn on him. The West’s game plan – if it can be dignified with that term – is to force Putin to over-extend Russian forces in Ukraine by flooding the battlefield with armaments, and then watch his government collapse under the weight of popular discontent at home.

But in practice, the reverse has been happening, just as it did through the 1990s when the West imposed sanctions on Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Putin’s position has been bolstered, as it will continue to be whether Russia is triumphing or losing on the battlefield. 

The West’s economic sanctions against Russia have been doubly foolish. They have reinforced Putin’s message that the West seeks to destroy Russia, just as it previously did Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. A strongman is all that stands between an independent Russia and servitude, Putin can plausibly argue.

And at the same time, the sanctions have demonstrated to Russians how truly artful their leader is. Economic pressure from the West has largely backfired: sanctions have barely made an impression on the value of the rouble, while Europe looks to be heading into recession as Putin turns off the gas spigot.

It will doubtless not only be Russians quietly rejoicing at seeing the West get a dose of the medicine it so regularly force-feeds others.

Western conceit

But there is a more troubling dimension to the West’s conceit. It was the same high-handed belief that the West would face no consequences for waging economic warfare on Russia, just as earlier assumed it would be pain-free for Nato to station missiles on Moscow’s doorstep. (Presumably, the effect on Ukrainians was not factored into the calculations.)

The decision to recruit ever-more east European states into the Nato fold over the past two decades not only broke promises made to Soviet and Russian leaders, but flew in the face of advice from the West’s most expert policy-makers.

Guided by the US, Nato countries closed the military noose around Russia year by year, all the while claiming that the noose was entirely defensive.

Nato flirted openly with Ukraine, suggesting that it too might be admitted to their anti-Russia alliance.

The US had a hand in the 2014 protests that overthrew Ukraine’s government, one elected to keep channels open with Moscow. 

With a new government installed, the Ukrainian army incorporated ultra-nationalist, anti-Russia militias that engaged in a devastating civil war with Russian communities in the country’s east.

And all the while, Nato secretly cooperated with and trained that same Ukrainian army.

At no point in the eight long years of Ukraine’s civil war did Europe or the US care to imagine how all these events unfolding in Russia’s backyard might look to ordinary Russians. Might they not fear the West just as much as western publics have been encouraged by their media to fear Moscow? Putin did not need to invent their concern. The West achieved that all by itself.

The encirclement of Russia by Nato was not a one-off error. Western meddling in the coup and support for a nationalist Ukrainian army increasingly hostile to Russia were not one-offs either. Nato’s decision to flood Ukraine with weapons rather than concentrate on diplomacy is no aberration. Nor is the decision to impose economic sanctions on ordinary Russians.

These are all of a piece, a pattern of pathological behaviour by the West towards Russia – and any other resource-rich state that does not utterly submit to western control. If the West were an individual, the patient would be diagnosed as suffering from a severe personality disorder, one with a strong impulse for self-destruction.

Bogeyman needed

Worse still, this impulse does not appear to be open to correction – not as things stand. The truth is that Nato and its US ringmaster have no interest in changing.

Their purpose is to have a credible bogeyman, one that justifies continuing the massive wealth redistribution from ordinary citizens to an elite of the already ultra-rich. A supposed threat to Europe’s safety justifies pouring money into the maw of an expanding war machine masquerading as the “defence industries” – the military, the arms manufacturers, and the ever-growing complex of the surveillance, intelligence and security industries. Both Nato and a US network of more than 800 military bases around the globe just keep growing.

A bogeyman also ensures western publics are unified in their fear and hatred of an external enemy, making them readier to defer to their leaders to protect them – and with it, the institutions of power those leaders uphold and the status quo they represent.

Anyone suggesting meaningful reform of that system can be rounded on as a threat to national security, a traitor or a fool, as Britain’s former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn found out.

And a bogeyman distracts western publics from thinking about deeper threats, ones that our own leaders – rather than foreigners – are responsible for, such as the climate crisis they not only ignored but still fuel through the very military posturing and global confrontations they use to distract us. It is a perfect circle of self-harm.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the demise of the Soviet Union, the West has been casting around for a useful bogeyman to replace the Soviet Union, one that supposedly presents an existential threat to western civilisation.

Iraq’s weapons of mass distraction were only 45 minutes away – until we learned they did not, in fact, exist.

Afghanistan’s Taliban was harbouring al-Qaeda – until we learned that the Taliban had offered to hand Osama bin Laden over even before the 9/11 attacks.

There was the terrifying threat from the head-choppers of the Islamic State (IS) group – until we learned that they were the West’s arm’s-length allies in Syria and being supplied with weapons from Libya after it was liberated by the West from its dictator, Muammar Gadaffi.

And there is always Iran and its supposed nuclear weapons to worry about, even though Tehran signed an agreement in 2015 putting in place strict international oversight to prevent it from developing a bomb – until the US casually discarded the deal under pressure from Israel and chose not to replace it with anything else.

Braced for recession

Each of these threats was so grave it required an enormous expenditure of energy and treasure, until it had served its purpose of terrifying western publics into acquiescence. Invariably, the West’s meddling spawned a backlash that created another temporary enemy.

Now, like a predictable Hollywood sequel, the Cold War is back with a vengeance. Russia’s President Putin has a starring role. And the military-industrial complex is licking its lips with delight.

Ordinary people and small businesses are being told by European leaders to brace for a recession as energy companies once again clock up “eye-watering” profits.

Just as with the financial crash nearly 15 years ago, when the public was required to tighten its belt through austerity policies, a crisis is providing ideal conditions for wealth to be redistributed upwards.

Like other officials, Nato’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has sounded the alarm about “civil unrest” this winter as prices across Europe soar, even while demanding public money be used to send yet more weapons to Ukraine.

The question is whether western publics will keep buying the narrative of an existential threat that can only be dealt with if they, rather than their leaders, dig deep into their pockets. 

How America Is Crushing Europe

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: Modern Diplomacy

America creates, imposes, and enforces the sanctions against Russia, which are forcing up energy-prices in Europe, and are thereby driving Europe’s corporations to move to America, where taxes, safety-and-environmental regulations, and the rights of labor, are far lower, and so profits will be far higher for the investors. Furthermore, America can supply its own energy. Therefore, supply-chains are less dicey in the U.S. than in Europe. There is less and less reason now for a firm to be doing anything in Europe except selling to Europeans, who are becoming increasingly desperate to get whatever they can afford to buy, now that Russia, which had been providing the lowest-cost energy and other commodities, is being strangled out of European markets, by the sanctions. Money can move even when its owner can’t. The European public will now be left farther and farther behind as Europe’s wealth flees — mainly to America (whose Government had created this capital-flight of Europe’s wealth).

Europe’s leaders have cooperated with America’s leaders, to cause this European decline (by joining, instead of rejecting, America’s sanctions against Russia), but Germany’s companies can also enjoy significant benefits from relocating or expanding in America. Germany’s business daily newspaper, Handlelsblatt, reported, on September 25th, “More and more German companies are expanding their locations in North America: Washington attracts German companies with cheap energy and low taxes. This applies above all to the southern states. Berlin is alarmed – and wants to take countermeasures.” (Original: “Immer mehr deutsche Unternehmen bauen ihre Standorte in Nordamerika aus: Washington lockt deutsche Firmen mit billiger Energie und niedrigen Steuern. Das gilt vor allem für die Südstaaten. Berlin ist alarmiert – und will gegensteuern.”) It says that “Numerous German companies are planning to set up or expand their U.S. locations. … U.S. states such as Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma, show increasing interest” in offering special inducements for these firms to relocate, or to at least expand, their production in the U.S. For example, Pat Wilson, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, tells German companies that, “Our energy costs are low, and the networks are stable. … Companies coming to Georgia [from Germany] are reducing their carbon footprint.” Considering that one of the major reasons why Germany’s Government is squeezing-out Russia’s fuel-supplies (other than to ‘support democracy in Ukraine’, etc.) is that those Russian supplies are fossil fuels, an important benefit by which America can attract European firms (even on the basis of ‘Green’ arguments) is by advertising bigger ‘energy efficiency’ than in Europe — not necessarily in a strictly environmental sense, but definitely in the bottom-line sense, of lowered energy-costs, since America’s regulations are far less strict than in the EU. 

Also on the 25th, the Irish Examiner bannered “European industry buckles under weight of soaring energy prices: Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, warned last week that it could reallocate production out of Germany and eastern Europe if energy prices don’t come down.”

Also on the 25th, Oil Price dot com headlined “Europe Faces An Exodus Of Energy-Intensive Industries”, and mentioned especially that “the U.S. Steel giant ArcelorMittal said earlier this month that it would slash by half production at a steel mill in Germany and a unit at another plant, also in Germany. The company said it had based the decision on high gas prices. … ArcelorMittal earlier this year announced it had plans to expand a Texas operation.”

On September 26th, the New York Times bannered “Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s: U.S. manufacturing is experiencing a rebound, with companies adding workers amid high consumer demand for products.” In total, “As of August this year, manufacturers had added back about 1.43 million jobs, a net gain of 67,000 workers above prepandemic levels.” And this is only the start of America’s re-industrialization and economic recovery, because the hemorrhaging of jobs from Europe has only just begun. These German firms are getting in on the ground floor in America, leaving Europe’s workers behind, to swim or sink on their own (the ones that can).

Also on September 26th, Thomas Fazi at unherd dot com headlined “The EU is sleepwalking into anarchy: Its sanctions are crippling the bloc’s working class”, and documented that this hollowing-out of Europe’s economies is being experienced the most by Europe’s lower economic classes, who are the least capable of dealing with it but are being abandoned by the higher-wealth group, the investors, who are sending their money abroad, like banana-republic oligarchs do, and who might easily relocate themselves there too. 

On September 19th, the New York Times headlined “‘Crippling’ Energy Bills Force Europe’s Factories to Go Dark: Manufacturers are furloughing workers and shutting down lines because they can’t pay the gas and electric charges.” For example, a major employer in northern France, Arc International glass factory, doesn’t know whether they will survive: “Nicholas Hodler, the chief executive, surveyed the assembly line, shimmering blue with natural gas flames [gas that came from Russia and that now costs ten times as much as just a year ago]. For years, Arc had been powered by cheap energy that helped turn the company into the world’s largest producer of glass tableware. … But the impact of Russia’s abrupt cutoff of gas to Europe [forced by the sanctions] has doused the business with new risks. Energy prices have climbed so fast that Mr. Hodler has had to rewrite business forecasts six times in two months. Recently, he put a third of Arc’s 4,500 employees on partial furlough to save money. Four of the factory’s nine furnaces will be idled; the others will be switched from natural gas to diesel, a cheaper but more polluting fuel.” The “Green” Parties throughout Europe, such as in the persons of Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck, had led the European movement against importing Russian fuels, and could turn out to have led Europe actually to increase its carbon footprint, if the end result turns out to be to switch to more coal and diesel fuels, as they now are doing.

It could not have happened without the leaderships both in America and in Europe, who are leading the way for Europe’s economies to decline, and for America’s to boom from this — attracting more and more investors, and their investments, into America, from the U.S. regime’s vassal-nations (such as Germany and France), especially in the EU and NATO (these new banana-republics). The beneficiaries of all this are not only America’s weapons-manufacturing firms, such as Lockheed Martin, and extraction firms such as ExxonMobil, that are growing because of the plunge in Europe that’s due to Europe’s cutting itself off from the cheap energy that it had formerly enjoyed. The future is opening up again, for investors in the United States. It’s come-one, come-all, to investors from Europe, and leaving everyone else in Europe simply to sink, if they can’t get out. 

AMERICA’s GRAND MASTERS CHECKMATE THE BALTIC SEA

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The net result of these terrorist attacks is to render obsolete German popular demands to open Nord Stream 2, Declan Hayes writes.

By Declan Hayes

Source: The 21st Century

The CIA’s terrorist attack off the Danish coast on the Nord Stream pipelines Germany depends on may best be understood through the prism of Zbigniew Brzezinski‘s The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, America’s game plan to control the world and rid it of competitors

First off, there can be no doubt that Joe Biden’s America is the culprit.

Not only had the USA the most to gain by this terrorist act which only a handful of militaries could have pulled off but, as Tucker Carlson shows, both Victoria Fuck the EU Nuland and Joe Biden himself had each earlier promised to decommission these pipelines by any necessary means and, as the same clip shows, these terrorist acts are part and parcel of America’s green energy policies, which Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and a host of other American assets have long promulgated.

The net result of these terrorist attacks is to render obsolete German popular demands to open Nord Stream 2 as both pipelines are now out of service for the foreseeable future.

Good news for the new Norwegian-Polish pipeline which opened on the same day the Americans blew up Nord Stream but bad news for German industry, which is relocating to the United States to survive these never ending below the belt blows to their viability.

Good news also for MEP Radek Sikorski and America’s other clowns who run Poland and who, like the American cat’s paw that they are, now believe themselves to be the king makers as to which West European countries will get oil and from whom.

And that is at the heart of Poland’s EU problem.

Because it has a large population, it demands to be an EU heavyweight, much as Germany and France are, rather than being the American lapdog that it currently is in this and all other matters.

The Jack Russell Baltic countries are likewise schizophrenic: fond as these Jack Russells may be of barking and sniping, they are, at day’s end, little mutts of no great consequence.

The same is increasingly becoming the case with Germany, which is allowing herself to be pulled like a rag doll hither and thither by the United States and her agents, who have holed the bedrocks of a stable currency and low inflation, upon which post-war German prosperity was built.

Back in saner days, German leaders like Angela Merkel commanded respect.

Bolstered by cheap Russian energy and her own technological, logistical and industrial relations genius, Germany was not only the beating economic heart of the European Union but was very much a major global player as well.

Now, Germany’s erstwhile leaders kowtow to Ursula von der Leyen and America’s other unelectable EU puppet assets.

Whilst trying to compete with the rising Chinese behemoth, Germany finds herself betrayed at every turn, most especially by her American overseer, who covets not only Germany’s export markets but her domestic ones as well.

Given that Germany’s major producer of toilet paper has folded, it seems Germany will be importing toilet paper as well as other “luxury goods” from the United States this winter.

Germany is really in dire straits.

And Germany’s shortage of toilet paper is at the heart of the matter.

Whereas Germany and the Netherlands are on their knees, the American economy is booming, at least until the mid term elections are over.

Without the CIA’s systematic destruction of the German and allied economies, it is quite likely that would not be the case and Biden’s war mongering Democrats would be annihilated in the November elections.

However, thanks to the self immolation of the German and British economies, that will not be the case and Biden’s cronies will be able to make some sort of argument that they kept the Good Ship America afloat.

And, should Biden prevail, Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg, Ursula von der Leyen and those others who capsized the German economy should take their share of the credit.

As, perhaps, should those of us who vote for political parties that collude with Uncle Sam and thereby collude with Brzezinski’s blueprint for American hegemony.

Brzezinski’s basic thesis is that the United States must micro manage the conflicts and relationships it instigates in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East so that no rival superpower can arise to threaten the benefits that accrue to America by exploiting those regions.

It is within Brzezinski’s framework that American terrorism in Denmark, Armenia, Iraq, Ukraine and Syria all congeal into the one over riding thesis that America’s desire for hegemony is at the root of all our ills and Hollywood’s corresponding antithesis that America is a beacon of goodwill, democracy and all the other puerile garbage NATO’s studios churn out.

But it also helps to explain NATO’s phantom fears of red-green brown and similarly multi-colored alliances, where the far right, the far left and disaffected Muslims would unite to give them and their thieving ways the heave ho.

NATO, Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen fear no such thing.

What they do fear is a strong sovereign people, an alliance of Dutch or German citizens who would demand, as the French demanded in 1789, that these parasites and the self-serving political system they have cocooned themselves in get off their backs once and for all.

Now, though I don’t believe that the Germans are suddenly going to storm their equivalent of the Bastille, I would hope and even pray that Germany’s industrial, financial and labor leaders would lead Europe in calling time on Biden, von der Leyen and all their cronies who insist that we emulate Australian school children and eat crickets to save the environment, whilst Joe and Hunter Biden cause massive environmental havoc in the Baltic Sea, as well as in Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Armenia and the countless other sovereign nations they have destroyed.

LIFE… IN REVERSAL

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

‘We must distinguish between real change and fictitious change. The change that comes from without, from externally imposed training and discipline, is fictitious…Real change comes from within, by conscious work intentionally performed by the being himself.’ ~J.G. Bennett 

It is increasingly difficult in these times to speak of ‘non-verifiable’ or unprovable matters, especially concerns of the spirit-consciousness, for too many people are inculcated with fixed beliefs and thinking patterns. This is itself a sign of social conditioning and of a certain ‘management of mind.’ We should not be surprised that this situation is rife throughout our societies and cultures and is becoming increasingly predominant. Social norms are persuading many people to prefer safety and security rather than the potential discomfort that comes from gaining new realizations and understanding.

An ex-officer of the Soviet secret police who defected to the West (Gregory Klimov), revealed that in the fields of Soviet psychological warfare (and social psychology) they utilized the principles of psychoanalysis. In this, they saw the phenomena of evil as a ‘complicated, complex social illness.’ The psychoanalysts within the KGB equated evil with illness, especially an illness of the human psyche. This perspective places demonic actors and events as ‘objective realities;’ i.e., as various forms of illness of ‘psyche and soul.’ As the Russian anthroposophist G.A. Bondarev writes: ‘The devils represents an involved and complex process of degeneracy or retrogression that in the main consists of three parts: sexual deviation, psychic illnesses and some physical deformities of the organism.

The number of humans already afflicted with this degeneration is legion.’1 Bondarev goes on to say that, based on certain social-psychological testing, the greatest degeneracy exists within the so-called elite of the world (as much as 75%). What this points to, concludes Bondarev, is a drastic decline of the human spirit. What it also tells us is that the phenomenon of ‘evil’ does not necessarily need to be personified or projected into certain personages as it represents an illness of the human psyche. We can recognize its presence operating within psychic imbalance and internal disconnect and detachment. And I would concur with Bondarev’s conclusion in that such psychic dis-ease represents an inner disconnect with the transcendental impulse. This disconnect, or splintering, from a sacred source has now come to signify the nature of the reversal that epitomizes much of contemporary life.

It is within this reversal that we see much of the negating, or counter-evolutionary, forces within humanity. And these forces have been dominating much of our everyday lives and continue to do so. I would suggest that it is our individual responsibility to recognize these forces, attempt to comprehend them, and to transform them into impulses that can work for humankind’s evolvement. In this, we need to come to grips with the presence and activity of those aspects that signify a psychic illness, or dis-ease, within life. Such aspects are a feature of existence as much as positive, developmental forces. They all act within the playground of attraction, repulsion, and the expression of energy. The Rosicrucians recognized these forces when they referred to the Deus Inversus – or the ‘Reversed God.’ This nature of reversal works on humanity through the spheres of imbalance and disharmony to counteract civilizational development. The Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner was aware of the future impact of such forces when he stated that: ‘It is essential that the forces which manifest as evil if they appear at the wrong place must be taken in hand…in such a way that humanity can achieve something with these forces of evil that will be beneficial for the future of the whole of world evolution.’2 In this regard, it is important that the individual becomes aware of the metaphysical realm that lies beyond the threshold of normal, or every day, consciousness.

If we remain unawares to our own forces of spirit-consciousness, then we are more susceptible to the manipulations of such counter-developmental forces. Those readers familiar with my writings will know that I have attempted to draw attention to certain aspects of our consensus reality in order to gain greater clarity about how we may respond to the situation in a constructive way. I stand by what was written in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip: ‘For so long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes.’ Recognition, through heightened awareness and perception, brings more choice into play. The individual needs to be conscious of certain facts before they can manifest the correct intention and focus of will. What is needed is a culture of revelation – of ‘uncovering’ – rather than of cover up. It is through revelation that insight into the metaphysical foundation of life can be sustained within our increasingly materialistic societies. This access to metaphysical realities can never be wholly eradicated. Yet just a cursory glance at modern life indicates that there are attempts to deepen peoples’ immersion into deteriorating forms of dissonance and distraction. This can be seen as a form of reality deceit.

Reality Deceit

The great deceit that is coming upon us is the unveiling of a so-called ‘utopia’ based on the isolation of the human spirit-consciousness. This fake promise is wrapped up in tech-salvationist terms, heralding a false ideal future. The real dis-ease of the human condition is to be in a state of estrangement. That is, estranged and alienated from any metaphysical influence or nourishment. It is not that the metaphysical background to life must necessarily be obvious to us, or tangible in our daily lives – only that we are cognizant of its existence and continual influence. Yet once this sense of recognition (the act of aware cognition) is dissolved, a barren soulless life is the result. And yet, in most circumstances, people will not be cognizant of this loss – this lack of the transcendental impulse in their lives – for they will be entrained into a reality consisting of a physical-digital mesh that keeps them attached to their lower nature and desires. This deceit consists of a most heinous form of enslavement, for it shall both be a willing one as well as an ignorant one. The splintering of the human being from its metaphysical connection shall go almost unnoticed, and the transfer into a reality of limited consciousness will have been enacted quite skillfully. This sly route to a human condition of alienation, procured through the guise of technological advancement and progress, will be a coup against the creative spirit. And this shall be the reversal of the human reality – the reality deceit.

The almost imperceptible dangers are that we have been slipping into a reversed reality, constructed through a realm of fantasy and make-believe, which now fuels the crass and superficial culture industries that dominate modern life. Any notion of Higher Reality has been twisted into an artificial lesser reality that attempts to hinder, as far as is possible, the developmental impulse from penetrating. This arrangement has culminated in dissociating humankind not only from its natural, organic, carbon-based environment, but also from an inherent contact with its origin – Source consciousness. This increasing disembodiment is reflected in such forms as the techno-digital ecosystem, extended reality (the Metaverse), computerization (including algorithms), and artificial intelligence. For many people today, their digital devices have become their instruments of salvation. But this salvation, this divine deliverance, belongs to the Deus Inversus – and we should choose our gods carefully. We should be careful too, not to be pulled into the encroaching banalization of life. And we should be on the look-out for signs and signals.

If anyone wishes to see how ‘signals’ can operate within the reality deceit, then watch all the episodes in the recent Westworld TV series (2016-2022). In Season Four, the machinic android ‘hosts’ have taken control of the world using a bioengineered virus that infects humans over the course of a generation, turning them docile and susceptible to AI and ‘host’ control. Storylines and narratives are created in order to give people their roles and characters in life, which they passively follow believing them to be their own life stories. Humankind is managed through these manufactured ‘storylines’ (a.k.a. socio-cultural narratives) that are transmitted directly to the minds and lives of humans through a series of radio-sonic transmission signals via the global technological infrastructure…But then again, this is just a fantasy story after all.

The course of external events that inform our political, economic, and cultural systems are not arbitrary, coincidental or natural. The modern human has been subtly manipulated into disconnecting from, and even shunning, the guidance of higher impulses. We are being told that the human being alone is the sole and dominant driving force for the future. And by this, we are propelled ever further into the personality construct with the human ego at the wheel. We are standing at the threshold of adopting a glorified materialistic view of life and the world. The spell of this disease is working to over-materialize materialism in a very deliberate and nefarious way. There may be some discomfort in the unfoldment of awareness, yet this is part of the transmutation of the dis-ease.

Life ‘in reversal’ is working hard and fast on this intensifying of materialism. This deepening materialism not only denies the expansion of consciousness but is actively working to stagnate it. At the same time, we are moving through an impulse of increasing individual awareness against the backdrop of this over-materialization. Yet it is an awareness through the few, and not the many (yet). By recognizing that certain forces within the world are using processes of mass suggestion to introduce a simplification – or ‘dumbing down’ – of human consciousness, we can gain greater awareness over our condition and predicament. And in this awareness, we can gain a natural resistance and protection, as recognition allows a discernment to be made. It is this discernment to step away from the negating energies and frequencies of toxicity that can help a person to attune to a resonance of perceptive consciousness. By choosing where we place ourselves – our focus and attention – we can either take a step forward or stay where we are and stagnate. As always, the choice remains with us.

Whodunnit? – Facts Related to The Sabotage Attack On The Nord Stream Pipelines

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Source: Moon of Alabama

For decades the U.S. opposed European projects to receive energy from Russia. It wants Europe to buy more expensive U.S. oil and gas.

the Lemniscat @theLemniscat – 15:56 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

US plan was always to stop EU buying Russia’s gas
2014
Rice:”You want to change the structure of energy dependence. You want to depend more on the North America energy platform … to have pipelines that don’t go through Ukraine & Russia”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aF0uYIjaTNE

Europe’s, and especially Germany’s industry, depends on cheap energy from Russia. Without it Europe will be de-industrialized and go broke.

The U.S. had threatened to disable the pipelines connecting Europe to Russia.

ABC News @ABC – 9:59pm · 7 Feb 2022

Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”
Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”
abcn.ws/3B5SScx

Currently the U.S. is winning its war on Europe’s, mainly Germany’s, industries and people. Yesterday’s sabotage attack on the Nord Stream I and II pipelines, which are supposed to bring Russian natural gas to Germany, mean that the the war on Germany has entered its hot phase.

A question remains: Whodunnit?

Russia has no motive to destroy the pipelines it owns. These are valuable, long term assets and the gas that escaped from them yesterday was on its own worth some $600 to $800 million.

A pipeline that could be turned off and on again was a leverage point for Russia that gave it some negotiation power. A destroyed pipeline gives Russia no leverage. This is truly elementary. One can not spin that away.

During the war in Ukraine Russia has not stopped to deliver gas to Europe as contractually agreed. Instead European countries, Poland, Ukraine and Germany have blocked overland and sub sea pipelines that brought gas to Germany.

German people have protested against the U.S. ordered shut down of the Nord Stream II pipeline. (Nord Stream I was recently offline because Siemens was prevented by sanctions from maintaining its compressor turbines.)

RadioGenova @RadioGenova – 18:02 UTC · Sep 26, 2022

Thousands of people in Gera in Germany against Olaf Scholz’s policy and the explosion of energy and gas prices. They demand an end to sanctions on Russia and the reopening of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Demonstrations also in other German cities but EU media censors them.
Embedded video

A day after the protests the pipelines were sabotaged:

AZ @AZmilitary1 – 12:51 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

HERE IT IS
Footage from the site of a gas leak on the underwater section of the Nord Stream.
The video was published by the Danish military.
Earlier, the Kremlin said that it was most likely about sabotage.
The same opinion was expressed in the German government.
Embedded video

Yesterday’s attack on the Nord Stream system is not unprecedented:

professional hog groomer @bidetmarxman – 15:51 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

In 2015, the annual routine underwater survey of the Nord Stream 1 pipelines came across a remote operated vehicle rigged with explosives right next to one of the lines in Swedish waters.
The umbilical cable had been cut. The drone’s national origin was never disclosed. 🧵

In 2015 Pipeline Journal reported:

[T]he Swedish military has successfully cleared a remote operated vehicle (drone) rigged with explosives found near Line 2 of the Nord Stream Natural Gas offshore pipeline system.

The vehicle was discovered during a routine survey operation as part of the annual integrity assessment of the Nord Stream pipeline. Since it was within the Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) approximately 120 km away from the island of Gotland, the Swedes called on their armed forces to remove and ultimately disarm the object.
…
The national identity of the drone has not been verified so far, as many countries use Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) of a similar construction, [Jesper Stolpe, Swedish Armed Forces spokesman,] said.

To destroy a sub sea pipeline requires more than a ROV/drone delivered shaped charge.

Javier Blas @JavierBlas – 15:18 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

How strong is a Nord Stream pipe? Quite!
The steel pipe itself has a wall of 4.1 centimeters (1.6 inches), and it’s coated with another 6-11 cm of steel-reinforced concrete. Each section of the pipe weighs 11 tonnes, which goes to 24-25 tonnes after the concrete is applied.

It wasn’t earthquakes that destroyed the pipelines. These were several well targeted and massive explosions:

A Swedish seismologist said on Tuesday he was certain the seismic activity detected at the site of the Nord Stream pipeline gas leaks in the Baltic Sea was caused by explosions and not earthquakes nor landslides.

Bjorn Lund, seismologist at the Swedish National Seismic Network at Uppsala University, said seismic data gathered by him and Nordic colleagues showed that the explosions took place in the water and not in the rock under the seabed.

The targeted explosions were not small:

Dagny Taggart @DagnyTaggart963 – 15:56 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

Swedish seismologists from Lund University noted that “at least 100 kg of TNT (perhaps more) were used to destroy the pipelines.”

Here is where the pipelines were hit:

The Baltic Sea is controlled by NATO. This from June 2022:

“BALTOPS, with the high degree of complexity, tested our collective readiness and adaptability, while also highlighting the strength of our Alliance and resolve in providing a maritime domain with freedom of navigation for all,” said Vice Adm. Gene Black, commander, U.S. Sixth Fleet and Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO).

Led by U.S. Sixth Fleet, BALTOPS 22 was command and controlled by STRIKFORNATO. From the staff’s headquarters in Oeiras, Portugal, Rear Adm. James Morley, STRIKFORNATO deputy commander, was responsible for ensuring participants met all training objectives.
…
[Rear Adm. John Menoni, commander, Expeditionary Strike Group Two,] also noted several instances in which forces stepped beyond know warfare methods to push limits with new technologies at sea and ashore. “Whether it was mine-hunting UUVs, persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance from an observable UAV, or demonstrating the value of the emerging Marine Corps concept of Expeditionary Advance Base Operations (EABO), our men and women continue to develop the tactics, techniques, and procedures that ultimately make meaningful contributions to Maritime Domain Awareness and increase the lethality of our forces.”

At sea, ships fine-tuned tactical maneuvering, anti-submarine warfare, live-fire training, mine countermeasures operations, and replenishments at sea. The Swedish submarine participating in the exercise, the U.K.’s Daring-class air-defense destroyer HMS Defender (D 36), and aircraft from other participating nations trained in anti-submarine warfare. Meanwhile, mine operations served as an ideal area of focus for testing new technology.

Scientists from five nations brought the latest advancements in Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios. The BALTOPS Mine Counter Measure Task Group ventured throughout the Baltic region practicing ordnance location, exploitation, and disarming in critical maritime chokepoints.

While the Baltops 22 maneuver already took place in June and July of this year the U.S. Sixth Fleet left the Baltic Sea only a few days ago (in German, my translation):

Big Fleet Group From U.S. Navy Passes [German island passage] Fehmanbelt

On Wednesday morning the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge, escorted by the Landing Ships USS Arlington and USS Gunston Hall, was en route towards west. Previously, the ships were part of US units that took part in NATO maneuvers and called at numerous ports in Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

The “USS Kearsarge”, flagship of the association and largest warship of the US Navy, which was in action in the Baltic Sea in the last 30 years, has 40 helicopters and fighter planes as well as more than 2000 soldiers on board, the escort ships about 1000. For the around 4,000 soldiers are heading back home on the east coast of the US after their six-month deployment.

Parts of the Kearsange operations in the Baltic Sea were dedicated to test special sub sea mine destruction technologies:

A significant focus of BALTOPS every year is the demonstration of NATO mine hunting capabilities, and this year the U.S. Navy continues to use the exercise as an opportunity to test emerging technology, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa Public Affairs said June 14.

In support of BALTOPS, U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers to bring the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios.

Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring all under the direction of U.S. 6th Fleet Task Force 68.

Off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, is where the pipelines were hit. Just days ago the USS Kearsarge was in that area:

AZ @AZmilitary1 – 13:52 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

An expeditionary detachment of US Navy ships led by the universal amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge days ago was in the Baltic Sea
It was 30 km from the site of the alleged sabotage on the Nord Stream-1 gas pipeline and 50 km from the threads of Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline

AZ @AZmilitary1 – 14:12 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

On September 2, interesting maneuvers performed by an American helicopter with the call sign FFAB123. Then it was assumed that this board was from the USS Kearsarge air wing, and today more details were looked.

According to the website ads-b.nl , this call sign was used by 6 boards that day, of which we managed to establish the side numbers of three. All of them are Sikorsky MH-60S.

By superimposing the FFAB123 route on the scheme of yesterday’s accident, we get a rather interesting result — the helicopter either flew along the Nord Stream-2 highway, or even between the points where the accident occurred.

On Twitter, meanwhile, there were screenshots of other flights of American aviation — the following screenshot was taken on September 13.

The MH-60S carries big electromagnetic sensors which allows it to detect submarines, mines and – in the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea –  sub sea pipelines.

This overlay picture of two others posted above is especially of interest:

The U.S. military is not the only force that was near the area of the pipeline damage. Just a 100 kilometer south is the Polish naval base Kolobrzeg (the former German Kolberg) which harbors mine laying ships and the 8th Kołobrzeg Naval Combat Engineer Battalion. Naval combat engineers are experts in blowing up anything that is under water, be it mines or pipelines.

In 2021, while Nord Stream 2 was still being build, the Polish navy had interfered and endangered the pipe laying vessels in the very same place.

Artifaktus @bzyqer – 7:49 UTC · Sep 28, 2022

Gdy Wy mycie zęby, przebieracie się w piżamy i szykujecie do snu, jeden niestrudzony Polak wyrusza w swoją łodzią w kierunku Bornholmu mając na sercu dobro Polski a może i Niemiec …

Translated from Polish by Google
When you brush your teeth, put on your pajamas and get ready to go to sleep, one tireless Pole sets off in his boat towards Bornholm with the good of Poland and maybe Germany at heart …
Image

During the recent Ukraine crisis Poland has rejected to receive Russian gas. It closed the Yamal pipeline that transports natural gas from Russia to Germany. Poland continued to consume Russia gas. It received it from Germany which had received it through the Nord Stream I pipeline from Russia.

Poland and Denmark have build a new sub sea pipeline which connects it to the pipeline that brings Norwegian gas to the Netherlands and Europe.

The pipeline was opened yesterday, the very same day the Nord Stream system was sabotaged.

Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland @PremierRP_en – 11:25 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

🇵🇱🤝🇩🇰 The #BalticPipe is a joint Polish-Danish investment in the energy security of the region.
Image

Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland @PremierRP_en – 13:43 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

🎥The launching ceremony of the #BalticPipe gas pipeline with participation of PM @MorawieckiM , PM of Denmark Mette Frederiksen & @prezydentpl @AndrzejDuda.
The Baltic Pipe is a strategic infrastructure project aimed at creating a new gas supply corridor on the European market.
Video

The Baltic Pipe has a capacity of only 10 billion cubic meters per year. The Nord Stream system could carry up to 110 cubic meter per year. All of which is needed to keep Europe’s industries running.

For more on Poland’s involvement, likely in cooperation with the U.S., read these informed speculations by John Helmer:

The explosions at Bornholm are the new Polish strike for war in Europe against Chancellor Olaf Scholz. So far the Chancellery in Berlin is silent, tellingly.

The Poles should be reminded that other countries also have the capabilities to sabotage sub sea pipelines.

Radosław Sikorski is a former Minister of Defense and Foreign Minister of Poland. He is now a Member of the European Parliament. Yesterday he posted a picture of the gas escaping the damaged Nord Stream pipelines and thanked the U.S. for blowing them up.

Sikorski is married to the neoconservative writer Anne Appelbaum who is notorious for her anti-Russian and anti-German screeds widely published in U.S. media.

In 2014 during the Maidan coup in Ukraine another notorious neoconservative, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, told the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, who should become the new prime minister of the Ukraine. She famously expressed her opinion about European concerns: “Fuck the EU” Nuland said. She is currently the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Over the last decades Germany has financed the Euro zone with up to 1.24 trillion Euros. (See also this thread). This was possible because Germany was exporting lots of industrial products and had a yearly surplus from its trade. With Germany’s industry going down because a lack of cheap energy that surplus will vanish. Europe, all of it, will become a poor continent.

Philip Pilkington @philippilk – 21:23 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

9/ The European energy war will likely go down in history, together with the Treaty of Versailles and the trade wars of the 1930s, as one of the biggest economic policy errors in history.

10/ Another thing: when Trump was elected on a platform of milder protectionism, many people rightly pointed to the 1920s and 1930s and warned against these policies. These same people appear to have supported these much more 1920s/30s-like policies this past year. Ironic.

This does not happen by chance or fate. It is part of a long term neoconservative plan for continued U.S. supremacy over the world. The Anglo-American axis is the only party to benefit from the recent events.

The U.S. allegedly warned Germany of sabotage of the Nord Stream system (in German).

This reminds of President Joe Biden’s warning of a Russian invasion in Ukraine early this year.

It is easy to predict such events when you are the one who intends to cause them.

The U.S. knew that the Ukraine was going to launch an attack on the Donbas republics. The U.S. knew that Russia would intervene to help its brethren. Russia had said so. The Ukrainian attack started with artillery preparations on February 17. Russia intervened on February 24.

The above is a collection of the currently available facts. You can draw your own conclusions from them.

The Timing of the Pipeline Attack

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Site of the Nord Stream 2 attack. (Danish Defense Ministry)

By Joe Lauria

Source: Consortium News

President Joe Biden, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz by his side, promised a White House press conference in early February that the U.S. was “able” to shut down the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea if Russia invaded Ukraine. 

A reporter asked Biden, “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?” Biden said: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

When Russia indeed invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Washington was able to get Berlin to suspend the pipeline project that was about to go online, even though it wasn’t in Germany’s interests. 

The pipeline has remained closed ever since. Why then did someone attack the pipeline on Monday, releasing the gas it contained into the Baltic Sea? As long as the war continues, the U.S. has what it wants regarding the pipeline.

Evidently, the fear in Washington is that the war might not continue for as long as it wants. I argued on Feb. 4, twenty days before the invasion, that the U.S. was setting a trap for Russia and needed it to invade Ukraine in order to unleash an information, economic and proxy war with the ultimate aim of regime change in Moscow. All that was confirmed by March 27.

Since then the U.S. and Britain have done everything it can to keep the war going, and the economic sanctions in place.  But those sanctions on Russia are devastating the European economy, driving energy prices up and shutting businesses down.  Ordinary Europeans are facing a winter in which they may not be able to afford to heat their homes.

This has led to growing popular unrest and pressure on European governments to end the war, lift the sanctions and save their economies.  Ending the war and lifting sanction would lead to the reopening of Nord Stream 2. 

Offer to Resume Shipments

Three weeks ago, President Vladimir Putin told a press conference in Samarkand that Russia was ready to resume supplying natural gas to Germany if Germany lifted its economic sanctions against Russia.   Putin said: 

“After all, if they need [gas] urgently, if things are so bad, just go ahead and lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2, with its 55 billion cubic metres per year – all they have to do is press the button and they will get it going. But they chose to shut it off themselves; they cannot repair one pipeline and imposed sanctions against the new Nord Stream 2 and will not open it. Are we to blame for this? Let them think hard about who is to blame and let none of them blame us for their own mistakes. Gazprom and Russia have always fulfilled and will fulfil all obligations under our agreements and contracts, with no failures ever.”

So the offer is there to return normal gas supplies to Europe if the sanctions are lifted. With the war having passed into its most dangerous phase, there is a growing urgency to stop the war, including talk of a Saudi-led peace process in which Ukraine would cede territory to Russia in exchange for peace.

If momentum grows for a peace deal of any kind it would ruin Washington’s long-term plans to weaken Russia. It would mean Nord Stream 2 would reopen, which would help Germany and Russia, but crush U.S. aims at regime change and making Europe dependent on U.S. energy.

“I promise you, we will be able” to shut down Nord Stream 2, Biden vowed. But how would the U.S. do that if Germany became poised to reopen it?

Escalation: Recent Events Suggest Mounting Economic Danger

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.us

A common refrain from people who are critical of alternative economists is that we have been predicting crisis for so long that “eventually we will be right.” These are generally people who don’t understand the nature of economic decline – It’s like an avalanche that builds over time, then breaks and quickly escalates as it flows down the mountain. What they don’t grasp is that they are in the middle of an economic collapse RIGHT NOW, and they just can’t see it because they have been acclimated to the presence of the snow and cold.

Economic decline is a process that takes many years, and while you might get an event like the market crash of 1929 or the crash of 2008, these moments of panic are nothing more than the wreckage left behind by the great wave of tumbling ice that everyone should have seen coming far in advance, but they refused.

In 2022 the job of warning people is far easier than it used to be because we are well past the midpoint of the process of decline. But, believe it or not, I still get people today who claim that we analysts are “doom mongers.” The power of willful ignorance is truly amazing. It’s enough to make a person blind to stagflationary crisis, supply chain disruptions, quickly inflating prices, stock market carnage, bond market instability, record consumer debt, and international conflict.

At this point, I think if a person can’t see the dangers ahead they are probably a waste of time and space and are destined to be buried in the ice; there’s nothing that can be done for them. Yes, there are some people out there that don’t get exposed to the information and we have to take them into account, but my priority will be people that are awake and aware and try to give them a sense of what point in the collapse process we find ourselves.

In the past month there has been a considerable uptick in economic and geopolitical activity that suggests we are entering a new phase, and not surprisingly it’s all accumulating right before we hit October. Here are the events that I find most concerning:

The European Energy Crisis

This is an event that I have been predicting since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and now it is upon us. I wrote about it extensively in my recent article ‘Europe Is Facing Energy Disaster And It’s Going To Bleed Over Into The US’ so I won’t rehash all that information here. What I do want to point out is the complete lack of planning on the part of European officials to deal with the threat. It is as if they WANT a full spectrum disaster.

Russia has now completely cut off natural gas supplies to Europe, which represent around 40% of all EU energy resources. Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices spiked by 28% a week ago, on top of already existing inflation. Oil supplies are also in steep decline for Europe and the EU government has pledged to cut what’s left of Russian oil imports by sea at the end of the year. Sadly, they have offered very little in the way of solutions to the supply-side problem.

There has been talk of increasing imports of alternative resources from other nations, but the EU is already buying up around 75% of all liquid natural gas from the US. OPEC oil producers have indicated they will not be attempting to increase production anytime soon (probably because they can’t due to inflation in operation costs). There is NO backup energy resource for Europe; it doesn’t exist right now. They will try to buy up whatever coal, oil and gas they can find on the market while driving up prices even more for other countries. They will still come up short, which means people are going to freeze this winter.

Best case scenario is that there are mostly mild temps and people barely scrape buy with minimum heating. But EU industry is going to suffer and many manufacturers are going to cut production (which mean more stress on the global supply chain).

Core Inflation Is Still Rising

As I warned last week in my article ‘It’s A Fact That Needs Repeating: The Federal Reserve Is A Suicide Bomber,’ inflation is continuing to rise despite the Fed’s continued interest rate hikes, giving the central bank even more ammunition to justify higher rates into extreme economic weakness.

The latest CPI print showed an increase to 8.3% and was a shock to markets which universally expected a drop. This is the nature of stagflation – Even with falling demand prices continue to climb or remain high for extended periods. The stagflation event of the 1970s lasted for a decade until the Fed jacked rates to 21% and then employment crumbled in the early 1980s.

This doesn’t mean that rates will go to 21% this time; they don’t need to. All it would take is a Federal Funds Rate of around 4% – 5% to crash our current QE addicted system. A 75 bps rate hike is now widely expected at the next Fed meeting this month, with some predicting a 100 bps hike. This would put us close to crash territory for markets and for employment, though I think we still have well into 2023 before unemployment really starts to spike.

Putin’s Meeting With Xi

As I write this, Vladimir Putin is set to meet with China’s Xi Jinping and the nature of the conference is not clear. There are the obvious points of agreement such as China’s continued purchases of Russian oil and other commodities, as well as the ongoing plan to build a pipeline to China by 2025. There is also strategic cooperation which is evident in the recent naval exercises between the two nations around Japan and Taiwan.

The timing of the meeting is concerning to me, because the prime season for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan is fast approaching (October is the best month for naval movements to avoid typhoons). China would not necessarily need to commit to a ground invasion, either. They could simply cut off all import/export trade from any source other than China and starve Taiwan until they accept unification.

There is also the issue of Ukraine and arms sales. With the amount of propaganda coming from Ukrainian Intelligence and NATO, it’s hard to say what is actually happening, but I suspect Russia is changing strategies and repositioning to deploy missile and artillery bombardment of infrastructure, including power grids and water. This is a tactic that Russia has avoided for months (until this week), which is surprising because one of the first measures usually taken by the US during an invasion is to eliminate most key infrastructure (as we did in Iraq). You would think Russia would have done the same, but perhaps they were saving that scenario for winter when it is harder for Ukraine to cope.

This would make Ukraine essentially unlivable in the coming winter for most of the population. Putin may be seeking to ensure China remains a steady economic partner should geopolitical pressures increase. They may even be making a deal of mutual support: China takes Taiwan while Russia makes Ukraine a resource wasteland and they each support the other economically when NATO counties try to impose sanctions on China. We probably won’t know until October, but the timing of the meeting should raise eyebrows.

If the manure is about to hit the fan in Taiwan along with Ukraine, then diplomatic and economic ties will be severed and western access to China’s manufacturing will be cut. This is a problem for China’s economy, certainly, which may be why they have continued their mass covid lockdowns well after every other government has abandoned them. Could this be practice for civil controls in an impending war environment?

China’s global dominance in imports/exports gives them considerable economic leverage in trade, however. Many nations would not support sanctions against them. Also, their vast holdings of US dollars and Treasuries could be used as a weapon to damage or destroy the dollar’s world reserve status. If China invades Taiwan this year, then all bets are off – The economic decline will move swiftly from that point on.

There are many other trends which factor into the crash environment but the above factors are the most recent and hold the biggest potential for causing a domino effect globally. The question that always arises is “what can we do about it?” Not much in terms of prevention. What we can do, though, is prepare locally to weather the storm. This means stocking necessities before they rise even further in price or become non-existent. Become a producer and learn a valuable skill for survival in a depleted economy Organize with people locally who are on the same page to create security and alternative trade opportunities.

Hopefully, the aware citizenry will rise to the challenge and organization will be extensive, because the worst case scenario would be great masses of completely isolated people all vying against each other rather than working towards mutual security. Even in a slow collapse scenario this is a problem in terms of rising crime; so plan on working with others if you want to avoid inevitable third world conditions.